Huawei had introduced a number of smartphones thus far this year, including their P9 and P9 Plus flagship handsets. That being said, the company still didn’t release their 2016 flagship phablet, the Huawei Mate 8, which was announced back in November last year, is still Huawei’s flagship phablet. This smartphone sports a 6-inch fullHD AMOLED display, 3GB / 4GB of RAM and 32GB / 64GB of expandable internal storage. The device is fueled by the Kirin 950 64-bit octa-core processor, and a 4,000mAh battery is also a part of this package, and it is not removable. The Mate 8 is made out of metal, and it ships with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with the company’s Emotion UI (EMUI) 4.0 skin on top of it.
That being said, Huawei is expected to introduce the Mate 9 later this year, though the company’s exec did confirm that the Mate 9 won’t arrive during IFA in Berlin, which means that we can expect it to launch in Q4 this year, quite probably October or November. Having that in mind, we have already seen several Mate 9 leaks thus far, and a new one just surfaced in China. According to an industry insider, the Huawei Mate 9 will be fueled by the Kirin 970 64-bit SoC which will be built using TSMC’s 10nm FinFET process. This essentially means that the Kirin 970 is supposed to be quite power efficient, and the Helio X30 is also expected to be manufactured using the same process. This news is quite interesting considering most people were expecting the Mate 9 to sport Huawei’s upcoming Kirin 960 SoC which will be made using TSMC’s 16nm manufacturing process, but it seems like Huawei is looking to up the ante.
That is more or less it as far as new info goes. Now, the Huawei Mate 9 will probably be made out of metal, just like its predecessors, and you can expect its fingerprint scanner to be placed on the back of the device once again. This phablet will probably ship with a 6-inch display just like its predecessor, and we do expect Huawei to opt for an AMOLED panel once again, though we still don’t know whether they’ll use a fullHD or a QHD display. Android 7.0 Nougat might even come pre-installed on this device considering Google is expected to release the stable version of that update in Q3 this year. On top of Android 7.0 Nougat, you can expect to see Huawei’s all-new Emotion UI (EMUI) 5.0 skin. That is more or less it, stay tuned.